iOS 7 downloads consumed 20 percent of an ISP’s traffic on release day

And P2P's share of all traffic is now less than 25% of what it was in 2008.

When Apple released iOS 7 to the world at 1pm ET on Sept. 18, legions of iPhone and iPad owners immediately downloaded the new operating system. That's no surprise, but statistics released today illustrate just how much of an impact the mobile OS had on Internet traffic.

At one unnamed North American fixed Internet provider, "Apple Updates immediately became almost 20 percent of total network traffic and continued to stay above 15 percent of total traffic into the evening peak hours," according to Sandvine's Global Internet Phenomena Report for the second half of 2013. Sandvine makes equipment that helps consumer broadband providers manage network congestion.

Over-the-air update sizes were 760MB for the iPhone 5, 900MB for the iPad 2, and 729MB for the Apple TV, the report says. Updates downloaded on desktops through iTunes were 1.2GB for the iPhone and 1.4GB for the iPad.

"Most interesting is the fact that the launch noticeably increased the total volume of traffic during peak hours. This presents a unique challenge for operators, since they must engineer their networks for peak demand, and Apple product launches and software updates are infrequent in nature," Sandvine wrote. "Several of Sandvine’s customers were closely monitoring the traffic demand the launch would cause, and based on the results we observed, we expect they will have a plan in place to manage the load when iOS 8 launches next year."

OS X Mavericks also placed a heavier-than-usual load on networks because this year's new version of the Mac operating system was free and a little bigger than the previous year's.

Further Reading

Overall, streaming video is still dominating Internet traffic. We noted a few months ago that "Netflix and YouTube alone account for nearly half of all Internet traffic to homes in North America during peak hours." Unsurprisingly, that is now more than half:

"YouTube continues to see growth in its share, now accounting for 18.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up 9 percent from our 1H 2013 study," Sandvine wrote. "This growth is likely not caused by the adoption of paid channels, but instead by continued growth of smartphone and tablet use within the home (i.e., 'Home Roaming'). While changes in share have been relatively minor, most interesting is the fact that Netflix and YouTube now combine to account for over 50 percent of downstream traffic."

BitTorrent is no longer the beast it once was in terms of overall traffic share. "As observed in previous reports, BitTorrent continues to lose share and now accounts for just 7.4 percent of traffic during peak period, and file sharing as a whole now accounts for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic," Sandvine wrote. "This demonstrates a sharp decline in share. Long are the days when file sharing accounted for over 31 percent total daily traffic, as we had revealed in our 2008 report."

This next chart shows that if you're looking to watch YouTube when quality is best, you should avoid the lunchtime and evening hours:

Actual throughput (80th percentile) achieved by YouTube from a number of US Internet service providers (both cable and DSL) for one week (all days overlaid) as collected in September 2013.

Sandvine

"What is instantly noticeable in the chart is the fact that YouTube has two pronounced dips," Sandvine wrote. "The first may not surprise some as it occurs during the evening peak period when networks are most congested. The second dip, however, is far more interesting as it occurs over the lunch hour."

While we've previously pinned the blame for poor YouTube quality on the business decisions of ISPs, Sandvine said Google deserves blame, too. Hulu (albeit with a lighter traffic load) doesn't suffer the same lunchtime and evening quality degradation, and the YouTube problems were consistent across ISPs. "[W]e can conclude that the quality degradation is likely occurring because of an oversubscription in the Google server farm (where YouTube is hosted), which makes YouTube unable to meet high video demand during lunch time and European evening," Sandvine wrote. "This oversubscription would result from a commercial decision by YouTube regarding how much capital they wanted to invest in server capacity to maintain quality."

Sandvine also provided some data relevant to the debate over data caps or "usage-based billing," which charge consumers extra when they go over the data limit prescribed by their Internet service provider.

Sandvine

"In North America, the top 1 percent of subscribers who make the heaviest use of the network’s upstream resources account for 39.8 percent of total upstream traffic," Sandvine wrote. "The comparable downstream users account for 10.1 percent of downstream bytes. At the opposite end of the usage spectrum, the network’s lightest 50 percent of users account for only 6.8 percent of total monthly traffic."

Promoted Comments

I'm pretty sure the big "drop" in P2P traffic between 2008 and today is the explosive growth of Netflix's streaming, which just drowns out the P2P traffic. I don't think there has been an enormous drop in P2P traffic, it just remained flat while Netflix exploded.

There key thing is there is very little upstream traffic on mobile networks and once you get past Web Browsing/YouTube/Facebook, any popular app (especially streaming) ACKs often make it appears in the list.

While the percentage may seem high, some back of the napkin math shows mean upstream usage is 59.2 MB, multiply that by 5% (that’s the peak figure, but for ball parking) and you are around only 3MB upstream each month."

I often wondered what these big rollouts do to the network. I wonder if they could stagger the download process over the course of several days and then trigger the install at the official release time. Basically the internet equivalent of product launches in stores--retailers already had the item in the backroom and they just put it on the floor on the sell date.

As observed in previous reports, BitTorrent continues to lose share and now accounts for just 7.4 percent of traffic during peak period, and file sharing as a whole now accounts for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic," Sandvine wrote. "This demonstrates a sharp decline in share. Long are the days when file sharing accounted for over 31 percent total daily traffic, as we had revealed in our 2008 report.

While 7.4% is just below 25% of 31%, that would be comparing 2013 BitTorrent traffic share to 2008 *total* "file sharing" traffic share.

It would also be comparing traffic *share*, not *traffic*. You could get a decrease in traffic share, while still seeing an increase in actual traffic. It seems reasonable to assume that streaming and other traffic has increased quite a bit since 2008, so even if the "file sharing" traffic had remained exactly the same, its traffic share would have still been reduced.

As observed in previous reports, BitTorrent continues to lose share and now accounts for just 7.4 percent of traffic during peak period, and file sharing as a whole now accounts for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic," Sandvine wrote. "This demonstrates a sharp decline in share. Long are the days when file sharing accounted for over 31 percent total daily traffic, as we had revealed in our 2008 report.

While 7.4% is just below 25% of 31%, that would be comparing 2013 BitTorrent traffic share to 2008 *total* "file sharing" traffic share.

It would also be comparing traffic *share*, not *traffic*. You could get a decrease in traffic share, while still seeing an increase in actual traffic. It seems reasonable to assume that streaming and other traffic has increased quite a bit since 2008, so even if the "file sharing" traffic had remained exactly the same, its traffic share would have still been reduced.

I wonder how much problems downloading the IOS update contributed to the extra traffic? When I tried to download it, the iPad would download most of the update (the progress bar would be a few percent short of full), then error-out and start all over again. I probably downloaded the same update four or five times on one devices before I got it to work.

As observed in previous reports, BitTorrent continues to lose share and now accounts for just 7.4 percent of traffic during peak period, and file sharing as a whole now accounts for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic," Sandvine wrote. "This demonstrates a sharp decline in share. Long are the days when file sharing accounted for over 31 percent total daily traffic, as we had revealed in our 2008 report.

While 7.4% is just below 25% of 31%, that would be comparing 2013 BitTorrent traffic share to 2008 *total* "file sharing" traffic share.

It would also be comparing traffic *share*, not *traffic*. You could get a decrease in traffic share, while still seeing an increase in actual traffic. It seems reasonable to assume that streaming and other traffic has increased quite a bit since 2008, so even if the "file sharing" traffic had remained exactly the same, its traffic share would have still been reduced.

Or are you basing the 75% drop on something else?

No, that should have read "share of all traffic," it's now fixed.

Isn't it still comparing 2008 BitTorrent to 2013 Total though?Sounds like "File Sharing" is now "Less than 10%", compared to "Over 31%" in 2008. That would be "Less than 33% of what it was in 2008", not less than 25%.

I'm pretty sure the big "drop" in P2P traffic between 2008 and today is the explosive growth of Netflix's streaming, which just drowns out the P2P traffic. I don't think there has been an enormous drop in P2P traffic, it just remained flat while Netflix exploded.

I'm pretty sure the big "drop" in P2P traffic between 2008 and today is the explosive growth of Netflix's streaming, which just drowns out the P2P traffic. I don't think there has been an enormous drop in P2P traffic, it just remained flat while Netflix exploded.

Yes. But for all practical purposes, it's the percents that are important, not the totals. If Netflix is the big traffic hog, then Netflix is what ISPs will target their upgrades for. If paid movie downloads outstrip pirated movie downloads, maybe Hollywood will stop it's Chicken Little routine about piracy. Etc.

I often wondered what these big rollouts do to the network. I wonder if they could stagger the download process over the course of several days and then trigger the install at the official release time. Basically the internet equivalent of product launches in stores--retailers already had the item in the backroom and they just put it on the floor on the sell date.

I believe for iOS 7 they did stagger it, reports were the update was showing up as available on devices depending on which time zone you were in, hour by hour.

Also, your backroom stock idea is sort of already being done. You do not download the update from Apple. You download it from whatever content distribution network Apple has contracted with. As you suggested, the update gets staged at all the regional servers of the CDN to spread out the load. But since everybody still has to establish a connection from their device to the CDN, you're not going to lower the overall number of connections or the overall amount of data downloaded, just how far it had to go and how long everybody had to wait for the download to complete.

How does this compare to the recent CoD release on Steam? That was a ~30GB and I'd have to imagine it was loaded on quite a few machines as well (realizing they could stagger the download and unlock as necessary).

WRT P2P. I'd be interested in raw numbers. As stated I would not be surprised if the raw numbers have stayed the same or increased slightly only to be drowned out by the huge surge in demand for Youtube and Netflix.

Our ITC (provides Internet access for school districts) sent out an alert on iOS 7 release day saying they were under a DDOS attack, bringing the state network to a halt. Turns out it was everyone downloading the iOS 7 update.

A high school teacher told me that the students that day were leaving their phones off all morning so they would have enough battery to download and install iOS 7 once it was released.

I wonder how much of the perceived drop in P2P traffic is actually due to the rise of VPNs.

That could indeed be true, but if you look at SSL traffic - it would probably fall under that. So - it's probably a combination of several events - the rise of Netflix, the enacting of the six-strikes/three-strikes laws which discourages the 'casual use' (which was probably several magnitudes greater than the hardcore users who jumped to VPNS), and the availability of legal and affordable content in general.

I wonder how much of the perceived drop in P2P traffic is actually due to the rise of VPNs.

That could indeed be true, but if you look at SSL traffic - it would probably fall under that. So - it's probably a combination of several events - the rise of Netflix, the enacting of the six-strikes/three-strikes laws which discourages the 'casual use' (which was probably several magnitudes greater than the hardcore users who jumped to VPNS), and the availability of legal and affordable content in general.

I believe the biggest impact has been the availability of legal and affordable content in general. We saw the same thing with music when iTunes and subsequent music services came out. In general, people want to purchase this stuff legally. They just want it to be reasonable cost and convenient. Sure, there will always be some subset who also wants it to be free, but I really think most people just want it to be fair (and easy). And most people (at least in the U.S.) think paying a few bucks to rent a movie on iTunes and/or $10/month for Netflix is both convenient and fair.

Yet another case where Google demonstrates superiority. By allowing carriers to have a say in updates, they respect the rights of content providers not to be flooded with extraneous, pointless network traffic.

Thanks to Jon and Ars staff for this article. The charts/graphs were especially informative about Internet traffic.I knew that Netflix and YouTube were popular but I didn't realize they were that dominant.

I wonder how much of the perceived drop in P2P traffic is actually due to the rise of VPNs.

That could indeed be true, but if you look at SSL traffic - it would probably fall under that. So - it's probably a combination of several events - the rise of Netflix, the enacting of the six-strikes/three-strikes laws which discourages the 'casual use' (which was probably several magnitudes greater than the hardcore users who jumped to VPNS), and the availability of legal and affordable content in general.

I believe the biggest impact has been the availability of legal and affordable content in general. We saw the same thing with music when iTunes and subsequent music services came out. In general, people want to purchase this stuff legally. They just want it to be reasonable cost and convenient. Sure, there will always be some subset who also wants it to be free, but I really think most people just want it to be fair (and easy). And most people (at least in the U.S.) think paying a few bucks to rent a movie on iTunes and/or $10/month for Netflix is both convenient and fair.

Yep.

And many (most?) TV shows are available for free streaming from the networks' sites, as well. The only time I have thought about "acquiring" something through "other means" recently is with "Homeland." I don't have Showtime, and when I first put a hold on S2 at the library, there were already 43 holds on it. It was getting frustrating. But in the end, I just waited, watched other stuff, then binge-watched the whole season in one day once it was available (GREAT season, btw).

Unless they end data caps and upgrade their networks to fiber and newer switches/routers, I don't care what their worries are. With all the premiums and how much they are charging for broadband in most of USA, any decently ran company would have already ran fiber throughout most of their backbones.

It is a sad state of networking when ipads, iphones and ipod touches and services sold for consumers can bring down the national internet so much.

I can only imagine how this will bode on forward, as more people jump on the smartphone bandwagon and drop cable TV altogether.

I often wondered what these big rollouts do to the network. I wonder if they could stagger the download process over the course of several days and then trigger the install at the official release time. Basically the internet equivalent of product launches in stores--retailers already had the item in the backroom and they just put it on the floor on the sell date.

Impossible. I have never seen a software project finish few days before the planned finish date. It's usually developers and QAs working evenings and dropping some non-essential features to get the release out of the door at the last possible moment.

My personal bandwidth spike occurred wen I installed mavericks, and iTunes proceeded to download my subscribed podcasts over and over again. I realized this was hammering the servers of a lot of small independent content folks (who have limited budgets to pay unexpected server bills). I finally gave up on using iTunes to curate my podcasts so as to avoid causing these people to get crazy server bills.

I'm pretty sure the big "drop" in P2P traffic between 2008 and today is the explosive growth of Netflix's streaming, which just drowns out the P2P traffic. I don't think there has been an enormous drop in P2P traffic, it just remained flat while Netflix exploded.

That might be a fraction of the explanation, but I do also think Netflix has caused a drop in P2P traffic. Many people who used to pirate movies just turn on Netflix now because it's even more convenient than bittorrent.

I use Netflix via Roku as my primary media service - no cable. If it's not on Netflix, then I check Amazon. If it's a 2 dollar rental, I purchase. If not, I either move on to something else or torrent. So Netflix has made a pretty big dent in my P2P traffic.

BTW, after getting a nasty-gram from my ISP a couple of years ago, I starting using put dot io for my torrents. I don't have to personally torrent anything, I stream video directly from the service. The service is based in Turkey. I wonder if that has any effect on US bandwidth figures for P2P traffic. I'm sure many torrent users are doing something similar.

I wonder how much problems downloading the IOS update contributed to the extra traffic? When I tried to download it, the iPad would download most of the update (the progress bar would be a few percent short of full), then error-out and start all over again. I probably downloaded the same update four or five times on one devices before I got it to work.

Sad that iOS 7 was a forced upgrade to benefit Apple's marketing claims but in reality there are a lot of displeased customers who would rather roll back to iOS 6 but Apple doesn't allow it. There's also the issue of fragmentation where apps like Dead Trigger 2 requires iOS 7. So much for Apple's marketing claims when Dead Trigger 2 on Android works with even Ice Cream Sandwich.

Sad that iOS 7 was a forced upgrade to benefit Apple's marketing claims but in reality there are a lot of displeased customers who would rather roll back to iOS 6 but Apple doesn't allow it. There's also the issue of fragmentation where apps like Dead Trigger 2 requires iOS 7. So much for Apple's marketing claims when Dead Trigger 2 on Android works with even Ice Cream Sandwich.

If you don't want closed, curated ecosystems, why are you on Apple products?

Seriously, I'm not being a "fanboy" here as I'm equally comfortable on both platforms, but these decisions are constant and unceasing. They are not isolated.

Yet another case where Google demonstrates superiority. By allowing carriers to have a say in updates, they respect the rights of content providers not to be flooded with extraneous, pointless network traffic.

This Google innovation has made it possible for content providers to logically suppress Android updates to their devices, since one of the most effective ways to maximize the available capacity of a content provider's network is to not provide the content that everybody wants the most.

So....what the hell is SSL in this context, and why is it in that chart? Are they talking about just the protocol overhead, or do they literally mean all https traffic is only that small portion of the pie?

So....what the hell is SSL in this context, and why is it in that chart? Are they talking about just the protocol overhead, or do they literally mean all https traffic is only that small portion of the pie?

SSL is still somewhat expensive, most websites don't use it. I would have thought that Facebook and Google would have pushed the SSL numbers up a bit more than that however, Facebook especially since it is so image heavy.

In college, i would keep handy the schedule of football games since my apartment was near the stadium. It helped ALOT to avoid driving during those times. I haven't thought about doing something like this with the internet until now.